The present invention relates to support devices and, more particularly, to support devices for supporting terminals of computer systems.
The relatively recent appearance of the computer terminal as a ubiquitous feature of the office workplace has significantly changed the ergonomic requirements of such office workplace. Whether the computer terminal is a stand-alone unit having its own processor or a remote dumb terminal of a central computer system, it generally consists of an input device, such as, for example, a QWERTY keyboard and/or a numeric keypad, and an output device, such as, for example, a cathode ray tube (CRT), liquid crystal display (LCD) or other numeric, alphanumeric or graphic display device. The input device and the display device may be physically separable using, for example, a flexible cord to permit independent movement of the input device for accommodating the individual needs of the worker, or the input device and the display device may be integrated into a single unitary assembly.
Although computer terminals may also include such additional input and output devices as card or paper tape punches and readers and/or printing devices and the like, these devices are not considered to be relevant to present disclosure and are therefore not further considered herein. For concreteness of description, the terminal support disclosed herein is adapted to the support of a computer terminal having a CRT and a QWERTY keyboard with these elements being either separable or unitary. One skilled in the art would recognize that the disclosure herein may be applied to other computer terminal configurations and that terminal supports therefor constructed according to the teachings of the present invention should be considered to be within the scope of the present invention.
A worker at a computer terminal may be required to spend longer hours in a more constrained physical posture than is required of workers at many other business tasks. In order to maintain worker comfort and efficiency, more care must be given to the ergonomic requirements of the worker at a computer terminal. These include appropriate desk height and design, chair design for maintenance of comfortable and efficient posture and an appropriate balance between general lighting and task lighting. It is especially important to position the CRT in height, transverse position, depth position, vertical axis rotation and at least one horizontal axis rotation for comfortable viewing without excessive head and eye motion and without distracting reflections from the screen of the CRT.
A computer terminal represents a substantial capital investment. Many work situations require that several workers have access to a computer terminal but do not warrant the expense of a separate computer terminal for each worker. One solution is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,563 wherein a computer terminal support includes means for permitting rotation about a single vertical axis and for permitting translation of the computer terminal toward and away from the vertical axis. When several workers' desks are arranged in an island with the vertical axis centrally disposed, the display of the computer terminal may be rotated about the single vertical axis to face a worker at any one of the several desks in the island and may be translated toward and away from the worker. Having only a single axis, this device permits very limited positioning of the display device and thus fails to satisfy all of the ergonomic needs of the workers.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,365,561 discloses a pedestal-mounted device for supporting a computer terminal. This device provides rotation of the display device about the vertical axis of the pedestal and about a horizontal axis for angularly positioning the display device and provides vertical motion of the pedestal for vertically positioning the display device and keyboard. This device has very limited provision for horizontally positioning the computer terminal for use by even one worker since its horizontal position is rigidly constrained by the position of the pedestal. Basically, this device requires that the worker move from the normal desk location to an auxiliary work station comprised of the disclosed pedestal-mounted device with its supported computer terminal. For tasks requiring back-and-forth reference to materials at the normal desk location and at the terminal, a substantial amount of chair swivelling or sliding and worker motion is required. If use of the terminal by more than one worker is required, the workers' desks must be arranged with a substantial open space between them so that any one of them requiring access to the computer terminal can rotate the computer terminal about the vertical axis of the pedestal and then either move the regular desk chair up to the computer terminal or use a separate chair maintained at the computer terminal.
Other support devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,849,534 for supporting a tray in a drive-in restaurant; U.S. Pat. No. 2,991,138 for supporting a tray; U.S. Pat. No. 3,157,379 for supporting furniture to a wall bracket and U.S. Pat. No. 4,085,961 for supporting a tool box to a pickup truck. None of these additional references either addresses or solves the ergonomic problems of supporting a computer terminal for the efficient and comfortable use by one or more workers.